Science Fiction nostaglia - part 1

  On the first of January, 1964 Bantam paperbacks published Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye.  I was 13 going on 14 then. Sometime later, I don't know exactly, but it was certainly before 1966 I picked up a used copy of the paperback exactly as shown on the Wikipedia entry.  It's one of a few books I read in my formative years that I remember vividly.  The story was about marketing research being done by powerful AI computers.  These computers create a simulated world of people to receive product marketing messages being tested.  The extent to which marketing based on scientific (mainly psychological) research manifested itself in the 50's in the US was the subject of a book published in 1957 by Vance Packard called The Hidden Persuaders.  Galouye, like Packard got his start in the newspaper business.  I also read the Hidden Persuaders, but probably after I had read Simulacron-3.

   The extent to which this book remained in my memory was largely unknown to me until the release in 1999 of The Thirteenth Floor, a movie by Josef Rusnak produced by the Emmerichs and executive produced by Michael Ballhaus.   Ballhaus was Rainer Werner Fassbinder's cinematographer for 16 films in the 70's and in 1973 they made an adaption of Simulacron-3 for German Television called Welt Am Draht (World on a Wire).  I think this was the only science fiction that Fassbinder made. I tried for many years after I learned of the Ballhaus link between The Thirteenth Floor and Welt am Draht in 1999 to see it.  Several years ago I finally watched it from a PAL DVD on a cheap chinese DVD player that could transcode in real time to NTSC. Now, you don't have to go to such lengths as a Ballhaus supervised digital transfer is available on the Criterion Collection.  If you have Hulu+ you can even stream that version.  I intend to do that soon.

  The topic of virtual reality seems closely related to the nature of reality in the first place.  Psychological exploration of reality is a meme in science fiction and the imagery used, especially in television science fiction is fascinating.  The use of mirror's is one such technique.  Another motif is the presence in the frame of video monitor's, which can serve to show another version of reality, make references to other times and places or impute the presence of a 'watcher'.

  Fassbinder's use of mirrors and monitors is discussed by Ed Halter in World on a Wire:  The Hall of Mirrors .  My first recollection of the use a monitor in a scifi movie came from Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times.  I also want to mention, as Halter does that using monitor's these day's is a low budget option (not sure about the 30's) and was used quite effectively in television's Space 1999 series.